Combat Beneath the Waves/Enkanomiya Battle Theme 1/Genshin Impact 2.4 OST INSANE Piano Arrangement

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Description

This arrangement is a rather special someone among our works. The harmony and voices in the original piece, a string quintet with voice, are very clear-cut and the notes easy to catch, yet it gets all too difficult to bring them all out on a piano with just 2 hands. The different timbre of violin, viola, cello, bass and soprano allow them to play interweaving melodies and counter-melodies even within a narrow pitch range, in addition to the complex rhythm. This brought great challenge in deciding whether to stick to these voices, or to modify, or even to discard them.

The introduction already gets very interesting - the instruments are not playing identical rhythmic patterns; rather there is a slight rest in the middle voices. It would’ve made little difference to ignore the nuance, but I decided otherwise despite its taking some time to practice. Still, on a piano we can never make crescendo within one note like strings do, neither can I afford too many bass notes from the beginning. As a result, some qualities of the introduction (for example the mystery and the anticipation of danger in Enkanomiya) is lost.

Section A, the D F A C (we’ll call it motif A) is first played by a violin, followed by the cello playing a melody (melody B) developed from the motif. In order to imitate the the pizzicato I can’t use the pedal, meaning I can’t sustain the bass notes and play the melody B in the middle range. Hence I moved motif A to the LH so that it can be played with the bass, while moving melody B one octave higher with the RH (sounds like a viola now). And this got so difficult to coordinate!

In the next section (B) with a beautiful melody (melody C) by the violin, I made a draft and edited it with Jasper. Performance-wise this is not particularly difficult, but it takes effort to get the RH jumps to high accuracy. The nuances in accompanying rhythm between every repeat are a bit frustrating too. (cost me so many takes in recording)

Section A’, motif A returns with richer texture. I tried to merge viola and violin II into a single voice to provide the layering. I also used a simpler waltz-ish LH pattern, which works surprisingly well when played against the syncopated middle voice. Sadly I couldn’t find a way to keep the violin ostinato in the last few bars.

Section B’, melody C returns with the soprano singing (or breathing?) in a very charming voice – it’s a pity that I have to leave it out, but fortunately I found a way to keep all of the remaining voices including the scale by the violin, with somewhat awkward hand positions though. As the melody stays roughly unchanged through 3 repeats, I decided to do single notes in the first time, octaves in the second, and turned the scales to wider arpeggios in the last time (this was Jasper’s idea). In this section the technical challenge comes from emphasising the melody amidst the runs.

Section A’’, I tried to stick to the original as close as possible too. Since the melody (viola) is played below a pedal note (violin), it gets a bit difficult to execute on the piano for small hands like mine. Similar to previous sections, I used different ranges of the keyboard to create a progression in music: same range as a viola in the first time, and it goes an octave higher every repeat.

In the next section (B’’?) the materials from sections A and B are blended, bringing the most trouble in arranging. A fragment of melody C is sung by the soprano, against the strings playing motif A. The violin also plays an ostinato which I incorporated into the RH. I tackled motif A in a similar way as in section A, but since the texture has got richer, I need more bass, so the LH has to do a lot of syncopated jumps.

Then the violin takes over the melody fragment and develops into a new form C’. with more changes in bass and harmony. The slightly different rhythm in the accompaniment led to some semiquaver jumps in the RH.

Finally, melody fragment against motif A again, but this time the rhythmic pattern in every voice gets significantly altered, reminding me of the Jade Chamber battle theme. This is undoubtedly the most difficult passage! Practicing it made me feel of surpassing my limit in multi-voice coordination.

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Sheet Music:
https://chaconnescott.gumroad.com/l/c...

Difficulty 5/5


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#genshinimpact #enkanomiya #battletheme